Like a clean cow chewing cud...so Bede describes the poet Caedmon. This blog is a place to report news, calls for papers, news items, and other things of interest to the Late Antique, Patristic, Early Medieval, and Book Arts folk and to just chat about things medieval.
Also see other blogs at The Heroic Age and Modern Medieval.

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Thursday, June 13, 2013

Well, tardy, overdue, and underdone, but the Carnivalesque is below. More to come!

Hello and welcome to the slightly tardy
Carnivalesque, Pre-Modern Edition. Honestly, I miss the old days
where we had enough posts to fill an ancient and medieval and
renaissance carnivalesques! Ah, the nostalgia.....

So, here we are. Before starting, I'd
like to give a shout out to three blogs that keep us all up to date
on all kinds of field related news. First, David Meadows and his
Rogueclassicism (rogueclassicism.com) keep us up on Classics in the
News, Classics news, and other materials from the ancient
Mediterranean world. David also sends out a weekly email newsletter
of news related to Archaeology and so on called Explorator.

Second, covering things Medieval,
Medievalists.net operated by Peter Konieczny and Sandra Sadowski, who
consistently update us on medievalism, medieval news, articles old
and new, and a host of other related things (and they do other blogs
too!).

Third is Jim Davila's Palaeojudaica
(http://paleojudaica.blogspot.com/
) that purports to be a simple blog about ancient Judaism and its
context, but in reality covers the news and issues on a much broader
canvas.

Now that the kudos are done, let's take
a look at what the blogosphere has been up to of late. Starting in
the ancient world, let me start with Judith Weingarten writing at
Zenobia, Empress of the East; in a two part post on graffiti in Dura
Europos, (http://judithweingarten.blogspot.com/2013/05/i-am-hiya.html
)a city of never-ending fascination and interest, (and I learned a
new adjective, Durene, which of course describes things from Dura
Europos). Nor is Zenobia's the only one....she references 3 recent
studies on Durene graffiti.

Over at concocting history, we have an
interesting post about breast feeding; while the focus is on modern
research, a good bit is on the ancients and what they knew about the
health beneifts of breast feeding. Galen, Hippocratic treatises, and
Dioscorides make appearances in the discussion
(http://ancientrecipes.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/of-milk-and-honey/
).

A little further in time is Professor
Grumpy at Historian on the Edge (aka Guy Halsall I believe). Halsall
has been doing quite a bit of thinking about notions of the “state”
in late antiquity over the last couple years. Earlier this month he
shared a pre-circulated version of a paper he recently delivered on
The Crisis of the State
(http://600transformer.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-crisis-of-state.html
), perfectly timed at least for those USA readers whose own state is
undergoing a shocking crisis at the moment. If I've understood him
aright, and I may not have, he suggests that to ask the question of
whether something in late antiquity is or is not a state distracts
and detracts from other key questions and issues. See if I'm right
and give it a read.

With Grumpy tipping us over the edge,
we can enter into a review of the good Medieval posts of the last
several weeks. Let me start by pointing to “theculturegirl” who
gives us an excellent post on “How Medieval Monasteries Made
Money”, a title with enough alliteration to attract a poet
(http://theculturegirl.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/how-medieval-monasteries-made-money/
). She gives us a nice overview of the issue, and I am both happy
and ashamed to learn the word and the practice of “multure.”

The Lost Fort weighs in with three
posts I'd like to highlight. Just returned from a trip, our blogger
shares some pictures of the castles visited on said trip in a two
part post. The photo essay is fascinating and the pictures are good
quality. Last month before the trip I was educated on the Imperial
Palatine Seat Tilleda-Fortifications, a medieval fort that I'd not
known about previously. Good photos, interesting post, and I learned
a thing or two. (http://lostfort.blogspot.com/
)

on Norse Vágar
in the Lofoten Islands. The post covers some history, some ramblings
about stockfish, and other items of interest.

Tim Clarkson over at the Senchus blog
gives us an examination of the Battle of Dun Nechtain, 658
(http://senchus.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/against-iron-swords-dun-nechtain-ad-685/
). One of the more well-known battles in the early medieval period,
the Picts defeat of the Northumbrians and the death of Ecgfrith and a
good portion of his army in the process, this one stands as a
game-changing event at least for Northern England and Scotland.

No fewer than three of Steve
Muhlberger's posts have been nominated from his Muhlberger's World
History blogs. In the first, Steve ponders the notion that
men-at-arms were hostile to archers and crossbowman. He reflects on
a story in the Chronicle of the Good Duke Louis of Bourbon that
confirms the notion.

Finally, Steve makes a point about the
Crusades by pointing to something modern....is that modernism in
contrast to Medievalism? In any case, Steve reacts to those who fail
to understand the Crusades since religious wars seem to be so distant
from Jesus' statements about peace and love. Steve's rejoinder
points to the Battle Hymn of the Republic as a more recent example of
Christian drum-beating....and this against a Christian foe! See it
all here:

The Incuncabula Project Blog at
Cambridge University Library brings us a discussion of the four
copies of the Ninth German Bible of 1483. The post gives the origin
and provenance of the four copies, including a couple of intriguing
puzzles. Learn all about it (and see the photos) at:
https://inc.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=2458
.

The blog unifinity gives us a couple of
interesting posts on things from the Far East. First up is an
interesting post, though a little late perhaps for inclusion here,
but where the hay, on the Taiping Rebellion. What's that you say?
You know, the “Jesus' Other Brother” one:
http://www.unifiniti.com/2012/06/taiping-rebellion.html#.Ubtx05w4QWU

Early
Modern Thought Online gives us a blog entry on Defining Philosophy in
Early Modern Germany
(http://emto.tumblr.com/post/50573212656/defining-philosophy-in-early-modern-germany-i
). Melancthon seems to be the central figure since the
authors/philosophers who are talked about in the post all encountered
him and were taught by him in the mid 16th
century. Interestingly at the height of the Reformation, thinkers
could agree on something: “The
first interesting aspect to note is that in the middle of the 16th
century, the definition of philosophy as cognition of Divine and
human things was acceptable across confessional boundaries....” So
something good in the 1500s anyway.